Beauty and the Reaper

So, I’ve got this friend… I’ll call her Beauty… and she stopped by our place last night for a visit. Now, Beauty is one of my oldest friends, and I’ve known her for almost as long as I’ve known The Cheerleader I Climb Mountains With (who I’ve known for 30 years or so). Anyway… we got to talking philosophically about life, aging, death, and time. Beauty lives an incredible life in a far away land with her little family, and they all seem tanned, happy and adventure-laden. She has one of those lives that many people would envy, and she herself is pretty damn content.

Beauty is a strong, inspiring, incredible star of a woman, and a part of me thinks of her as my sister (I never had a sister, so by law I am allowed to usurp sisters from other families). She is also the most physically beautiful woman I know – like, supermodel beautiful. Like, ‘there is no way that woman was created by mere mortals’ beautiful, and her spirit and her absolute joy that makes her seem almost ethereal. Which is why it sort of took me off guard when she told me that she was thinking of getting a tattoo of the grim reaper. A BIG tattoo of the grim reaper.

Now, I’ve got my fair share of tattoos myself, so I’m not one to judge, and I certainly don’t judge Beauty at all. In fact, I’m all for it! It just wasn’t what I had expected at all. But her reasoning behind it, the conversation we had that led up to it, was what made me think about my own life, and my own personal motto (which most of you will know as “Do it. Do it Now“).

Beauty was saying that sometimes she forgets to slow down and make peace with her life, to understand that the time she has on this earth is limited, so that she’d be wise to make the most of it. The grim reaper is meant to be a reminder of the fact that death is waiting, so why not love life? Give it all you’ve got. See the things you want to see, love the people you want to love, experience all the greatness that you can jam into your life, and ditch anyone and anything that tries to slow you down.

I like it. The grim reaper. A black, dark, evil tattoo on the skin of someone beautiful… what a cool freakin’ way to turn ash into phoenix.